Edge Festival Highlight: Santogold

Tess Askew | Tuesday, 02 September 2008

Santi White, aka Santogold, performed at Edinburgh's Liquid Room venue as part of The Edge Festival, which took place throughout the whole of August. Here's what we thought...

Santogold is supported on this occasion by Glasgow band Fangs, who are full of attitude, and quite rightly so. This band seem unique and are really comfortable on stage. They deserve to go far. Santogold's DJ takes to the stage and starts playing records, while her band all come on.

They are all dressed in charcoal shirts, with blue bow ties, they take their positions and stare straight into the audience. Next on are the backing dancers, who are both beautiful, and dressed in black baggy cut off trousers, white frilly shirts and patterned Raybans. Again, they stare into the audience. The set up is impressive, not just like any other gig, you can see how much work has gone into this. Santogold takes to the stage and the place goes mad for her. She sings over her record and the band continue to stand still and stare into the audience, her dancers are amazingly choreographed and have a great sense of attitude about them, which make them amazing to watch.

You can see how much Santogold is loving being on stage, and she smiles her way through the set. She's dressed in a multicoloured jump suit, gold jewellery and black flatcap, her voice is really strong and grimey, and she's very pretty. The band play the second song and this makes the audience go even more mental, the sound of the band is great and the crowd just move to it.

I was really impressed with Santogold and her band, who are well rehearsed and just really good and enthusiastic about what they do. It was a pleasant surprise. I'd been a fan of the record, but hadn't seen any footage of live performances, so I was really impressed by this gig. Santogold was one of the strong highlights, and considering the line up of this festival, that’s saying something.